The Middle St. Vrain project for 2004 took place on June 19th this year. Due to the dry spring and early run off, the Forest Service had reviewed the road a few weeks earlier and had opened the gates at Camp Dick and on Coney Creek at Beaver Reservoir. So, we did not need to run the road to determine if it could handle traffic.

Our project this year focused on rebuilding the buck and rail fencing at the beginning of the Middle St. Vrain just past the Sourdough Trail crossing. The old buck and rail had been knocked down and the public was driving around two of the road obstacles. In order to keep the traffic on the road corridor we needed to rebuild the buck and rail fence and put large boulders along the road side to reinforce the buck and rail. To do this we acquired a back hoe from Nixcavating and got Richard Boddy to run it for us. Our first task was to haul down the boulders we would need to block off the go around.

Starting at the furthest obstacle, we planted two of the large boulders into the berm of the water bar. Next we
planted some medium size boulders along the side of the road and began building the buck and rail fence over the top of the boulders.

Richard and a some of the volunteers moved back toward the entrance of the Middle St. Vrain and laid out a plan for the first obstacle / water bar. The goal was to improve the water bar function and harden the obstacle to represent the difficulty of the other natural obstacle along the Middle St. Vrain 4WD road. Richard got the boulders he would need moved down to the site by loading them onto Darrel’s flatbed Jeep. These were some nice big rocks, so Darrel was eyeing them with thoughts of his front yard. But, he ended up depositing them at the first obstacle.

We stopped for lunch and had a short business meeting before starting up again. Richard began by digging out the water bar and repositioning the berm about four feet down the road. He then placed three of the large boulders into the berm and buried them to keep them in place. To finish it off the water bar drainage was covered with the smaller rocks to keep it functional.

As a final project, Richard used the back hoe to dig out the small creek drainage that flows behind the gate and worked the slope to keep the water flowing across the road and not pooling up into the parking lot.

After the project was completed everyone headed back to the cabin and our club had a great dinner prepared by Cindy and Jennifer Mehlberg.

All Articles, Photographs, and Graphics are the property of the Trailridge Runners 4WD Club Inc. Re-publication, or any other use, is strickly prohibited without prior written consent. Contact the club to obtain permission. Some content is in the process of, or is already copyright protected. The Trailridge Runners 4WD Club is a non profit organization. Thank you.